These are hot toasted sandwiches but the wonderful secret of this recipe is that you can make it in a bog-standard frying pan ... which means that you don’t need to have a great, dirty, cumbersome, unwanted toasted sandwich-making machine cluttering up your entire life for the rare occasions when you want to eat a hot toasted sarnie.

INGREDIENTS

white sliced bread

butter

cheap ham

cheap cheese (cheap red cheddar is best)

a bit of cooking oil

You also need a frying pan.

TASTY TOASTIES

This recipe makes an excellent lunchtime/munchie snack and one of the wonders of the 21st century has gotta be the way that hot ham and cheese tastes totally different when they’re hot from when they’re cold.

Heat a smidgen of the oil in the frying pan (you need enough oil to just wet the bottom of the frying pan)

Butter two slices of bread

Lay a slice of ham on one piece of bread grate some of the cheese. You need enough grated cheese to cover the piece of ham.

Cover the piece of ham, (that’s already on the bread) with the grated cheese.

Put the other piece of buttered bread on top of the grated cheese (that’s ontop of the slice of ham, that’s on top of the buttered bread).

Gently transfer your hamy/cheesy sandwich to the hot frying pan. Lay it in the pan with the cheese side downwards.

The secret is to get the cheese to melt without burning the bread. You need to have a medium to low heat and you need to keep a careful eye on it. It should take about 4 mins. for the cheese to melt and for the bread to turn a golden brown - but not to burn! As soon as you have reached this point, turn the sandwich over and cook on its other side until the same brownness is achieved.

When it’s cooked, take it out of the pan, cut in half and serve on a warmed plate. If you’re serving this dish to senior members of the ecclesiastical establishment or the royal family, it may be handy to lay a napkin (serviette) on each plate. This dish is great with a handful of salted potato crisps (or “chips” if you’re in the States).

RECIPE TWO -
VEGGIE VERSION

INGREDIENTS

white sliced bread

butter

cheap cheese (cheap red cheddar is best)

a small onion

English mustard powder (optional)

a bit of cooking oil

Proceed as for the MEATY VERSION (above) but, instead of the ham and cheese filling, make up a filling of grated cheddar and very finely chopped onion. The onion needs to be in the smallest pieces that you can cut and you’ll need to spend a couple of minutes cutting it and re-cutting the pieces to get them small enough.

When you’ve chopped your onion, mix it with the grated cheese in the proportion of 2 parts grated cheese to one part chopped onion. If you like, add a couple of good pinches of English mustard powder for each toasted sarnie that you intend to make - this’ll give some extra kick.

Then cook gently in a smidgen of oil in the frying pan. Follow the procedure given above for the MEATY VERSION and turn when one side of the sarnie has toasted golden brown. This is yummy.